Tomorrow is Carole Middleton’s 70th birthday. The Daily Mail has been celebrating like Carole is a full-time working royal in need of embiggening. They’ve published several bizarre pieces about Carole this week, including a piece about her diet and figure, and one about how Carole is so much like Queen Elizabeth II. They come close to calling Carole part of the Greatest Generation, I swear to God. But nothing beats this lengthy piece which serves as a mulligan on Carole’s shameful financial catastrophe, like it never even happened, and her poor management and house of cards didn’t leave a trail of destruction. This Mail piece ends by suggesting, yet again, that Carole is due for an honorary title. *wipes tear away* She is the queen mother, after all.
Of all the absurd portrayals in Netflix’s multi-million- pound series The Crown, Carole Middleton’s must be up there with the silliest and cruellest. ‘Heels not flats,’ she barks at her daughter on the phone, ahead of the famous St Andrews University fashion show in 2002, where Kate supposedly wowed her future husband by strolling down the catwalk in a see-through dress.
‘You still want to show off those legs. It’s our duty to make use of the assets God has given us.’Carole is immortalised throughout the final series, released in 2023, as a grasping, scheming, ruthless social climber who repeatedly tried to fling her eldest daughter in Prince William’s path from childhood. It’s so ludicrously pantomime dame, it’s almost comedic. But then Carole Middleton, the real Carole Middleton, is no stranger to barbs and character assassinations.
‘She’s pushy, rather twee and incredibly middle class,’ one particularly snotty source said of Carole at the time. ‘She uses words such as ‘pleased to meet you’, ‘toilet’ and ‘pardon’.’ Carole was sniggered at for growing up in a council house, becoming a British Airways air hostess and reportedly chewing nicotine gum at Prince William’s Sandhurst passing-out ceremony in 2006.
Looking back now, on Carole Middleton’s 70th birthday, the flak that was thrown her way seems almost unbelievable given how admired she has become as the Middleton matriarch, especially after Kate’s cancer diagnosis, and the solid and unwavering role she’s played, particularly in the past year. When Kate was first spotted in public two months after her surgery last January, it was sitting beside her mother in the car.
In Kate’s personal Instagram video, released last September after her chemotherapy finished, there were scenes of the children on the swings at home in Norfolk, her and William lying on a blanket on the nearby beach, but notably also Kate’s parents – Carole and Michael – playing card games around the table. This appearance of the Middleton parents was very ‘telling’, a source reveals, adding that Carole was the family linchpin who often did the school run during this period, driving the children – and her daughter – there and back so that Kate could still be part of their daily routine.
I wonder what her critics would have preferred: that William had married a Sloaney blonde whose mother spent most of her time looking after the Labradors and arranging flowers at church?
The only question now is whether the Middletons will be granted a title – as grandparents of a future king, and to reward them for their unstinting loyalty and discretion over the past two decades. Middleton family friend and business tycoon Sir John Madejski has previously called for this. ‘They should be the Earl and Countess of Bucklebury,’ he said in 2014. ‘They deserve it. They are great people and really good role models.’
When Prince George was born in 2013, there were rumours of tension between the-then Prince Charles and the Middletons over who saw the new baby first. Classic grandparent stuff. But in recent years, the King is said simply to be grateful for the support they’ve shown his son, so perhaps an earldom is somewhere down the line, although insiders say this is more likely to happen when William becomes king. I can’t imagine it would change anything other than Carole’s notepaper, because she understands all too well that her role is to be the soft power behind the throne.
I said last year, when the Middletons were suddenly allowed back into society events, that a deal had been struck between the Middletons and the Windsors. I still believe that, and I believe we’re seeing the deal continue to play out this week, with these old-school, sugary briefings from Middleton HQ. The Middletons suddenly had cards to play last year and they played their hand to ensure that they were allowed back at Wimbledon and Royal Ascot, and that Carole would get credit for being the “linchpin” holding this mess together. This reads to me like Carole is pushing for even more. That being said, the Mail is definitely mocking Carole – the Sloaney blonde crack was so pointed, you know Carole’s skin got pierced. That IS what many people wanted, for William to not marry into this tacky grifter family.
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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images, Netflix.
